


The Fool

by palmtreelights



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Betrayal, Blood, Cannibalism, Canonical Character Death, Depression, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hallucinations, Mental Health Issues, Revenge, Tarot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 03:12:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6356635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palmtreelights/pseuds/palmtreelights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Josh's journey through that night on the mountain through the lens of the major arcana.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fool

**Author's Note:**

> As far as I understand it, the Fool of the tarot is someone beginning on a journey of self-discovery. Upright, the card is mainly positive. Inverted, its meanings are twisted and potentially dangerous. Josh fits eerily well in the role of the inverted Fool, or at least I think so. (I think most of the major arcana would fit best inverted, actually, but I didn't specify anything because tarot is so subjective anyway. That's part of why it's so fun to learn.)
> 
> My thanks to the usual suspects for letting me talk with them about mixing my fandom interests with my love of tarot.

**0\. The Fool**  
  
_I don’t think that your plan is going to help._  
  
Of course he doesn’t, because Dr. Hill is blind, he’s blind like all the rest of them pretending they left last February behind on the mountain the same way they left behind Hannah and Beth and common human decency.  
  
But that’s okay. It’s fine. Josh will open their eyes, he’ll tear open those old, festering wounds and clean out the infection and sanitize them, painful work, hateful work, necessary work that all of them are too self-absorbed to do themselves. They’re blind and they’re stupid and they all should’ve gone out there to look for his sisters, they should’ve woken him and Chris up and they should’ve gone out there, all eight of them, and searched and searched until they’d found the twins and brought them back or until all ten of them had been lost or killed or worse.  
  
Dr. Hill keeps texting.  
  
_LEAVE ME ALONE,_ Josh replies.  
  
Dr. Hill keeps texting.  
  
_im fine,_ Josh replies.  
  
Dr. Hill keeps texting.  
  
Josh has better things to do than answer again.

* * *

  
  
**I. The Magician  
**  
He was born for this.  
  
There’s magic in his blood, in his bones, in his DNA.  
  
There are films and awards and old props and costumes and tools, and there’s money, the key that opens the door the world Josh is creating, the spell he’s weaving for the best weekend, the best fucking weekend he’s had since his friends made his sisters run into a storm and never come back.  
  
_“I really want to spend some quality time with each and every one of you and, um, just share some moments that—we’ll never forget. For— for the sake of my sisters.”_  
  
How can they refuse him?  
  
He is a puppet master, he is a god, he is the hands and face of justice.  
  
They’ll be mesmerized.  
  
They’ll be sorry.

* * *

  
  
**II. The High Priestess**  
  
The stage is set, and the players are on their way.  
  
It’s another stormy weekend on the mountain, winter’s fury building in the distance and fast approaching, an exquisite score for the action to play out against.  
  
Josh couldn’t have planned it this perfectly if he’d tried.  
  
Nature has his back, the lodge creaking in the gusts that start to blow against it to announce the storm’s imminent arrival. His mother had told him once that this place was special, maybe even sacred. They should respect the mountain and the creatures that call it home, the trees and streams and weather that give it its breathtaking beauty.  
  
Josh strings up a pig carcass at the end of a snowy path, past a scarecrow that will spring up when one of his lucky friends is near enough to trip the trap. He’s making the mountain unforgettable in a while new way, with all the focus and devotion his father pours into his work.  
  
_See, Dad? I’ve totally learned from you._  
  
He tests the tricks he’s set up, checks the cameras, checks the switches, checks the setup with the dollhouse, checks his workshop one last time.  
  
They should be getting here now, his illustrious guests. Waiting has been difficult, but it will all bear fruit.  
  
The show will now begin.

* * *

  
  
**III. The Empress**  
  
Sam and Chris are the leads tonight, the two best friends with the least to fear, the only ones Josh can expect to be able to carry the show right.  
  
Josh goes to meet them, their paths crossing when they're halfway up from the cable car station. He smiles at them like nothing is wrong, because everything is right, everything is in place.  
  
Sam looks at him with ill-contained sadness, her smile so much like when his sisters’ disappearance was still too fresh to let him breathe right. It sends an ache through his chest as it takes him there, to last year, to their late-night texts and phone calls, their early-morning meetups on the beach.  
  
“I’m so, so sorry, Josh,” Sam had told him then, choking up with tears that never seemed to end. She’d cried enough for them both, and together they’d wept for all their other friends combined.  
  
She gets it. She really does.  
  
As they climb back up to the lodge, Josh almost tells her he’s sorry, too, even if she won’t know why until later. Not sorry for what she’ll go through, just sorry that she’s not in the loop.  
  
It’s all necessary, though. She’ll forgive him in the end, hug him like she did whenever he cracked and couldn’t stop sobbing, because she understands.  
  
He’ll forgive her, too, as soon as this is all over.

* * *

  
  
**IV. The Emperor**  
  
“Stop it! This is _not_ why we came up here. This is not helping. It’s not what I wanted.”  
  
It’s better than that.  
  
There’s lightning in the air between Emily and Jess, a spark Josh hadn’t expected to help him at all. He’d planned around it, thinking it would complicate things by exacerbating the stubbornness in both girls.  
  
But now he can separate them with ease. He sends off Mike and Jess, with a key and his blessing, to the cabin he’d finished preparing for them yesterday evening. The two of them, so central to his sisters’ deaths, will witness a wholly unique set of horrors.  
  
For now, though, he stays in the lodge, sharing a tired smirk with Matt as he offers to help Josh with the fire.  
  
He almost tells Matt he feels sorry for him, for how Emily’s got him on such a short leash, but Matt looks less annoyed than Mike ever did when she got like this with him. Hell, he almost looks fond, and Josh has to wonder what it is that would drive him to stay with her after witnessing how she is, how she can be.  
  
Not that Matt’s a saint, but still.  
  
There are little tricks and traps they might run into on their way back to the station and at the station itself, so this little side story will wind up weaving into the greater tale well enough.  
  
This is fine, everything’s going well, the wheels are turning, the action will unfold.  
  
The cameras are rolling. Josh grins in the firelight.

* * *

  
  
**V. The Hierophant**  
  
It’s cute how bad Sam is at playing pranks. She’s too honest, too genuinely kind to pull it off, but Josh indulges her anyway. With practice, she could be the best of all of them at games like this, playing up her sincerity like an actor shooting for an Oscar.  
  
Chris, though—Chris could give the others a run for his money.  
  
“Were you in on this, you putz?!” Sam asks, smacking Josh soundly on the arm.  
  
Josh laughs, high-fiving Chris. “No, but I wish I had been.” It’s a nice touch and an excellent distraction from the real action. Chris has learned well over the years. After tonight, Josh will consider him officially inducted into the inner circle of ultimate prank-playing, teaching him the secrets of his craft little by little, marrying his skill with cinematics with Chris’s computer savvy.  
  
They’ll be unstoppable together, when Chris understands what this weekend is about, why it has to be this way.  
  
He laughs his way up the stairs behind Sam and Chris.

* * *

  
  
**VI. The Lovers**  
  
“You notice how I gave Chris and Ash a mission together? I was thinking they could use some _alone time_.”  
  
“They are _very_ sweet together,” Sam had agreed. “I wish they’d just freaking _get on_ with it already.”  
  
Pretty much all of them, Hannah and Beth included, have said something to that effect over the years, but Josh is the only one who’s bothered to really _do_ something about it. Something for _them_ , the two skittish lovebirds who act as if they’re scared the other will bite.  
  
What’s wrong with a little biting now and then, anyway?  
  
Now they’re off on a hunt for the clue in the library, spooked beyond measure even though Chris doesn’t even believe in ghosts. Josh himself isn’t sure what he believes in anymore except what he creates, but he hopes his sisters are watching this, watching him shuffle their friends around like pieces on a board game, bringing Chris and Ashley together after years of badly keeping their crushes to themselves, tormenting the others so they feel just a sliver of what Beth and Hannah felt last year.  
  
Josh watches the lovebirds through grainy footage, nodding when Chris finds and shares the fake threat. “Knew you could do this, Cochise.”  
  
Second to getting revenge, this will be Josh’s greatest achievement on this glorious weekend.

* * *

  
  
**VII. The Chariot**  
  
It’s so hard not to laugh as Chris struggles to make his first choice.  
   
The outcome is the same either way. Ashley will be spared, and the Josh prop will be sliced in half, spilling blood and gore on the dirty, concrete floor of the shed. Taking forever to think about it won’t help at all. It’s a lesson in quick thinking, in making sudden choices, in diving in head first and working with what you get.  
   
What’s really important here is why he chooses to save whoever he picks.  
   
Truth told, he loses either way here, too: if he chooses Josh, he’s loyal and a dick; if he chooses Ashley, he’s a sap and a dick.  
   
But he’ll get the girl no matter what, and that’s the point, right?  
   
Josh can handle not being chosen. Sure, it’ll sting, but he’ll get over it. There’s worse shit to be angry about, to obsess over, to seek revenge for.  
   
“Chris,” he begs. “ _Buddy—_ ”  
   
Next to him, Ashley screams as the saw spins and spins.  
   
“I won’t let you die, Ash!” cries Chris.  
   
A sap and a dick. Chris is so predictable, even when he’s got nothing to lose. If he’d known his hand had been forced, would he have chosen the same way?  
   
Doesn’t matter. They can talk about it later.  
   
Josh screams and pretends to die and pinches himself behind the wooden panel to keep from bursting into laughter as Chris unties Ashley and the lovers flee in terror.

* * *

  
  
**VIII. Strength**  
  
He’d always known Sam was strong, in more ways than one.  
   
She’s physically strong, able to outrun, out-climb, and out-fight him. She made him look bad in front of his sisters, but Beth and Hannah laughed so hard and smiled so bright that Josh couldn’t bring himself to care.  
   
She’s strong-willed, giving up animal products for good when it got into her head that eating anything not vegan was too cruel for her. It’s been years, and she shows no sign of reverting to omnivore.  
   
She’s mentally strong, a bright student who’s going places with all those smarts and all that drive, with how good she is about managing her time.  
   
She’s emotionally strong, supporting herself and her friends in the wake of Hannah and Beth’s disappearance. Holding him up through the grief is proof enough of that kind of strength, gentle and dependable and warm when he is all rough edges and scattered thoughts and freezing heart.  
   
Of course she’d figure out a way to deviate from the script. Of course she’d outrun him even now, clad in nothing but a bath towel and lost in a part of the lodge she’s never seen before.  
   
“ _Fuck!_ ” he yells, turning around and heading back to his workshop.  
   
It’s just one small setback. It doesn’t make a difference. She’ll end up where she needs to be eventually.  
   
Right now, he has the lovebirds to attend to.

* * *

  
  
**IX. The Hermit**  
  
What he misses during the prank’s climactic scene is Sam finding his workshop and the puzzle pieces none but him were meant to see until he’d made his big reveal.  
  
Josh has spent months planning his elaborate scheme and weeks preparing for it, putting together the pieces and testing the rigs and machinery, the lights and the sounds, the trap doors and props, his costume and control room. His plans are scattered around the workshop along with reminders of why he’s doing this. The remembrance board fuels his anger, and the psych evaluation keeps him focused in ways the doctors and the medicine never could. He will help himself with this, help his friends with this—his idiotic friends who are living in denial of what they did last year.  
  
It’s been so hard not to tell Chris about this prank, even as Chris has dived into his coursework as an uncontestable excuse for the long periods without texts or emails. They’re brothers, they’re partners in crime. They should both be getting a laugh out of this.  
  
But Chris needs to go through this as much as the rest of them, as much as Josh himself needs to see what they do and how they play the game. And so does Sam, who’s talked with him about as much as Chris has this year, maybe more.  
  
All of them need this.  
  
They’ll understand, in time, why he’s disappeared into himself these past few months. Of all of them, Sam will probably understand it best, and not just because of what she finds in the workshop, unbeknownst to Josh. It’s just who she is, caring and loyal, the most trustworthy of them all, the only one who’d tried to stop Hannah from walking into that awful prank last year.  
  
“I tried, Josh,” she’d said to him. “I swear to god I tried—”  
  
“That’s more than I did,” he’d replied.  
  
He’ll put it all together for them soon.  
  
It’s almost over, and soon, the healing will begin.

* * *

  
  
**X. The Wheel of Fortune**  
  
He hadn’t imagined it would be this much fun watching everyone try to piece the mystery together. It’s all there, right in front of them, and they don’t _see_ it.  
   
This is why he’s doing this. They need to _look_. They need to _see_. They need to look _within_ and understand how that affects what’s _without_ and come to terms with the _whole_ and their _part_ in it.  
   
They need to be taught a _lesson_ about the way life _works_.  
   
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Ashley jumps back, scared, and Josh leans forward, laughing. Chris says something logical, Josh laughs what he says is so _wrong_. His friends think he’s trying to kill them, when all he’s doing is bringing them to a fuller life.  
   
As they approach the room with the dummy in Sam’s clothes, Josh dons his mask, ready to take the stage when his cue comes.  
   
This is it. This is the moment this has all been building towards.  
   
It’s going to be incredible.  
 

* * *

  
  
**XI. Justice**  
  
The saws spin overhead. Ashley cries. Chris deliberates again.  
   
This is _so good_.  
   
Of course Chris chooses to save Ash again, even after she begs him not to. So predictable. So _sweet_ , as Sam had put it.  
   
What gives Josh the right to play God in these people’s lives?  
   
His vision. His ability to see what others don’t see, to look at the possibilities and line up all these paths so that they lead to one single, perfect outcome, a picture made up of many parts.  
   
His best friend and his crush have confessed their feelings to each other. The others understand what his sisters went through. Sam is the hero who got away from the bad guy and walked in just in time to see the lovers in their moment of truth.  
   
Josh pulls off his mask. His laughter echoes in the cavernous room.  
   
No one looks happy.  
   
“How did it feel?” How does it feel to be on the receiving end of a cruel prank? At least Josh’s machinations have a _point_. Torturing Hannah for feelings she couldn’t control was _pointless_. If Josh has learned anything about filmmaking, it’s that every element and every choice should have a _point_.  
   
None of them is laughing because now they understand.  
   
Oh how the mighty have fallen.  
 

* * *

  
  
**XII. The Hanged Man**  
  
Somewhere on the mountain, out of reach of Josh’s carefully-laid plans, Emily is hanging from the fallen fire tower by a cable around her ankle and a metric fuckton of luck.  
   
In the basement, Josh has cut the strings on all his puppets, setting them loose to scramble together and make sense of everything that’s happened.  
   
They aren’t laughing. That’s okay. Once the shock wears off, once they see the footage, once they realize just how brilliant this whole set-up was, they’ll more than laugh. They’ll praise him. Thank him. Reminisce. Just like he’d told them in his invite, they have shared moments they will never forget, all for Hannah and Beth’s sake.  
   
They need to let go of their anger, let go of their hurt. They need to understand.  
   
“He’s definitely off his meds,” says Chris, his eyes narrowed.  
   
“ _Revenge_ ,” Josh answers, “is the _best_ medicine!”  
   
His meds had been a useless attempt to rein in the sickness that’s been plaguing him for as long as he can remember, but look at all he’d done when he chose to just let it carry him along.  
   
No one’s laughing. That’s okay.  
   
Josh laughs enough for them all.  


* * *

  
   
**XIII. Death**  
   
“Jessica’s fucking _dead_.”  
   
No.  
   
No, that’s—  
   
That’s not possible.  
   
“What?”  
   
There’s no misunderstanding Mike’s rage, the molten lava glowing bright in his eyes, burning down their years of friendship as he comes up to Josh through his tirade, his rant, his revelation.  
   
Josh doesn’t remember doing anything to Jess. That means something went wrong. But how could that have happened? He hasn’t even _seen_ her since he’d checked that she and Mike had been on their way to the cabin. They’d been _fine_. There hadn’t been anything deadly there, barely even anything scary. Just that book of legends and that copy of the kama sutra.  
   
“Jessica’s _dead_ ,” Mike repeats, “and you are gonna _fucking pay, you DICK!_ ”  
   
There’s enough time to wonder where the fuck he went wrong before Mike knocks him out cold.  
 

* * *

  
  
**XIV. Temperance**  
  
Oh Chris.  
   
Chris, Chris, Chris.  
   
Even betrayed, even indignant, even crudely mocked, he is still too soft to take what he wants.  
   
Josh reads him easily. Chris’s eyes are hollow and burning as he coils his fingers into fists that he tightens and loosens to a count that’s probably as swift as his heartbeat.  
   
“Fucking _pathetic_ , Christopher!” Josh yells at him. At his best friend. At his _bro_.  
   
His bro, who he helped get the girl he’s been in love with for fucking _years_.  
   
_This_ is how Chris repays him. By letting Mike point a gun at him. By staring between the two of them as if deciding which one of them he wants to hit more.  
   
By doing nothing when the threat of his best fucking friend getting shot is presented to him.  
   
Fucking pathetic, Christopher.  
   
Josh laughs at them both. Incompetent. _Fools_. Fucking _idiots_. Who the fuck does Mike think he is playing hero, playing crusader for justice just because Jessica is dead? It’s not even Josh’s fault. But Mike? Mike _is_ at fault for what happened to Hannah and Beth.  
   
And look at him now, playing hero.  
   
Chris takes half a step back and looks as if the whole world is pointing and laughing at him, and for a second, Josh is sorry.  
   
And then he’s not.  
   
How does Chris do it? How does Chris manage to look like a wounded puppy? How does he manage to look like he still gives a shit about Josh?  
   
He isn’t smiling when he leaves. He isn’t relaxed, even though his shoulders aren’t tensed up like Mike’s as he stares Josh down with eyes hard as iron.  
   
Josh hadn’t meant to hurt anyone, but shit had gotten out of hand, and now he’ll have to figure out which of the pieces of all the trust he’s broken fit together to reconstruct his friendship, his brotherhood with Chris.  
   
Chris, Chris, Chris. Fucking pathetic.  
   
The best friend Josh has ever known.  


* * *

  
   
**XV. The Devil**  
  
There’s a monster on the mountain.  
   
No. There’s a monster in his head.  
   
No. There’s a monster from his head on the mountain, because it feels too real. It _is_ real.  
   
Something sharp slices through the plastic tie around his wrists.  
   
Something with long and bony fingers grabs him by the wrist.  
   
Josh tries to jerk away, wiggles and wriggles and squirms to get free. He twists in its grasp to get a look at what it is that’s got him, and _god_ , he wishes he hadn’t.  
   
The monster yanks him back so hard that Josh falls clear off the stool he’d been given to sit on and hits his head hard on the cold ground. A moment or two after it starts dragging him away, his world goes black.  
 

* * *

  
  
**XVI. The Tower**  
   
When did everything start to fall apart?  
  
The world is icy wind, limbs like lead, a pang of sudden, deep fear.  
  
The lodge is on fire. He lies in the middle of the crumbling structure with its windows shattered and its walls being pried apart by monstrous hands so that the stormy gusts blow in and cut his face and smear snow and dirt and ash all over him.  
  
He sucks in a lungful of smoke and coughs so hard that he tastes blood in his mouth when he can finally breathe again. If he could move his heavy limbs, he’d wipe his mouth to see if it’s really there, or if his head is playing tricks on him, the sickness in his brain that he had planned to mute and conquer this weekend, dragging his friends with him through the painful healing they all so badly need.  
  
He’d been so careful, plotted the story out from start to finish, mapped out every detail, planted red herrings while hiding the truth.  
  
How could it all fall to pieces so thoroughly?  
  
The floor collapses beneath him. Josh plummets through the hole, chunks of flaming debris falling with him, lighting up the cold earth so brightly that he swears he’s now in hell.  
 

* * *

  
  
**XVII. The Star**  
  
Dr. Hill is probably the best shrink Josh has had. Not that the others weren’t good, but it’s just different. He’d worked hard, he’d made Josh work hard. He’d even helped Josh actually make progress for a while there after the disaster that was last year.  
   
It wasn’t enough, but that wasn’t really his fault. He just didn’t get it. He wasn’t the one with a depression so deep and monstrous that there didn’t seem to be meds out there strong enough. He wasn’t the one whose sisters had died because his friends had decided that being assholes and exacting petty revenge would be hilarious. He wasn’t the one hearing and seeing shit and having this brilliant idea and then having it go terribly wrong.  
   
The Dr. Hill with him in the cave isn’t real, but the words he leaves him with are Josh’s lifeline.  
   
_Deep breaths, Josh. Deep breaths._  
   
Josh gets up, breathes deep.  
   
But his nightmare is just beginning.  
 

* * *

  
  
**XVIII. The Moon**  
  
These are not his sisters. His sisters are dead.  
   
These are not his sisters, but they will not go away.  
   
Dr. Hill was right. Things are fucked up. Josh is no longer alone (no, no, he _is_ alone, _these are not his sisters_ ), and his loneliness is cold. It’s _freezing_. It’s a wet cold that leeches the heat from his skin and seeps into his bones and his head and looks and sounds like his sisters who keep telling him he wanted them to die and that’s why he didn’t save them—  
   
“I didn’t want you to die!”  
   
They won’t listen.  
   
“ _Leave me alone!_ ”  
   
They won’t leave.  
   
“ _JOSH…!_ ” says Hannah, or Beth, the voice a warped, raspy whisper.  
 

* * *

  
  
**XIX. The Sun**  
  
“M-Mike!”  
   
The world comes into focus. There’s moonlight filtering into the cave, and Mike is standing in front of him, and Sam is here, too.  
   
“D-Don’t—” Josh pauses, breathes (“ _Deep breaths, Josh,_ ” Dr. Hill has always said). “Don’t hit me, please.”  
   
His cheek stings, but he’s back. He’s _back_. His not-sisters are gone. The pig head and pig guts are gone.  
   
They’re all gone, and Sam knows what happened to them.  
   
Josh is too tired and slow from this entire night to ask Sam to keep going once Mike interrupts her. Hannah was here? Hannah _dug up_ Beth? It doesn’t make sense. He’s missing so much information.  
   
Oh god. Oh god, none of this was supposed to happen. Nobody was supposed to get hurt, not really.  
   
But Hannah—is Hannah still alive?  
   
“Josh,” says Sam, her voice and gaze firm but somehow still kind because it’s Sam and there’s blood on her, oh god— “Do you have the key to the cable car station?”  
   
“Uh… yeah… yeah.”  
   
He hands it to her and follows her and Mike to the cave wall, watches Mike give her a boost so she can start climbing up and out to the woods, to fresh air, to freedom, to approaching dawn. Daylight. Life.  
   
“You didn’t have to hit me so hard, man,” Josh tells Mike as they head back the way he and Sam had come, just like Sam told them to. He likes that Sam told them to. He trusts Sam. She has never tried to hurt him. Even her pranks have always been harmless.  
   
“I thought you killed Jess,” Mike is saying. Josh has missed whatever he said before. “I was wrong.”  
   
But Jess is still dead, and that’s not what Josh wanted. Everyone was supposed to be scared shitless, and embarrassed, and ashamed.  
   
And alive.  
   
He keeps walking, muttering to himself, to the voices still haunting him. Hannah? Beth? Josh doesn’t know anymore. “I know… I know…” he tells them.  
   
Mike gets into the water.  
   
Josh doesn’t even have the will to sigh at the prospect of the ice-cold experience ahead of him.  
   
Sam told him and Mike to go this way, so Josh follows.  
 

* * *

  
  
**XX. Judgment**  
  
“No,” Josh breathes, voice shaking as the monster that pulled Mike under looms tall and skinny and vicious before him. “ _No_. You’re not real! You’re _not real!_ ”  
   
It bares its teeth, its breath a thin, screechy sound, so much like Hannah had sounded in the hallucinations from just a few minutes ago—  
   
_Hannah_.  
   
“Josh, Hannah was down here. For— for _weeks_? A _month_?” Sam had said. “She _dug up Beth_ —”  
   
An instinct he doesn’t recognize guides his sight to the creature’s right arm, where Hannah’s butterfly tattoo would have been on display.  
   
His stomach drops. “ _Hannah?_ ”  
   
The creature pauses, the grabs him, lifting him high above the water as if inspecting him as he writhes and screams and begs—  
   
He’s going to die—  
   
He’s going to be with his sisters, finally—  
   
But this creature—no, _Hannah_ —  
   
Hannah drags him off, away from where Mike had been leading him, away from where Sam had told them to go. He screams and screams and screams, but Hannah doesn’t stop.  
   
She isn’t going to kill him herself, but she is going to leave him to something worse than that. To whatever happened to her. He knows it in his blood and in his bones because this is what he was doing to his friends, making them feel what his sisters had felt, what Hannah had felt.  
   
Life has dealt him far too swift and far too cruel a judgment.  
   
No, not too cruel.  
   
But definitely too swift.  
 

* * *

  
  
**XXI. The World**  
   
Hunger consumes him from within, claws its way up his body through his lungs into his mind.  
   
Eats his sense of self his guilt and shame his fear and sadness.  
   
Leaves him hollow fills him with rage with brute strength with sharp teeth with claws like razors.  
   
With _hunger_.  
   
Hannah (who is Hannah what is that name what does it mean, it is the one who brought him here, the one who pulled him out of the darkness and into this den and into a bond of pack and things he cannot name) has left him food— it isn’t food it isn’t food it’s— it’s sustenance, it’s life, it’s what he wants he craves he _needs_ —  
   
Fuck the voices from afar, fuck the tiny flashing lights on the edge of his vision, the flickers of a light he used to know, the voices whose words he still understands.  
   
Food, meat, blood—  
   
Josh Washington is just a whisper in what’s left of his old mind.  
   
Here comes prey, lighting up his darkened vision.  
   
Here comes food for him and _Hannah_.  
   
He will make her proud. He will be good to her. He will provide and protect.  
   
They will never be apart again.


End file.
